Friday, August 24

Goodbye, Glove?

Pat Riley confirmed what most of us expected on Friday, that Gary Payton will not be back in Miami next season for the Heat.

GP's coming off the 17th season of his career, a career that has made him 1) the greatest player in Sonic history and 2) a World Champion. Not bad for a kid from Oakland with a penchant for talking smack.

I'll save the post-mortem for Payton's career for when it happens, so allow me to ask this question of the Sonics' management: Is there any way you can make this happen? To Sam Presti, et al, does the good feeling generated by signing Payton to a one-year contract trigger anything within you?

Let's be honest, Payton isn't bringing much to the table these days, and he won't have a big impact on the team's won-loss record. But in a season where the team's interest in winning is secondary to player development, is it such a sacrifice to bring in one of the most beloved players in team history? Considering the horrific public relations job undertaken by the current ownership group, wouldn't it help to mend a few fences?

Perhaps I'm being overly sentimental and not seeing the NBA for the business which it surely is, but this is a game, after all, and the greatest reason teams make money is through making fans. I can't think of any signing this off-season that would make as many fans as signing Gary Payton would.

8 comments:

I'm not really interested in bringing back GP. I realize I will be in the minority here once more comments are up, but GP just doesn't seem to be a good fit, irrespective of his Seattle ties.

We don't have a young PG that needs to be groomed (as in a Mike Conley or something); we have a 4 and 6 year vet at the point who both want and need minutes. GP would only get Mike Wilkes' minutes and the "mouth" errr... I mean "glove" would be unhappy with DNP's imo.

Plus, GP is a notoriously bad practice player. We all know he doesn't practice unless he can't find an excuse and that is not the example that two young guys like Durant and Green need to see.

Let GP retire and give him a mostly ceremonial position with the team in some public relations capacity, but keep him away from our youngsters.

As a cost-cutting move prior to the trade deadline last season, I wanted Rick Sund to offer Earl Watson and Damien Wilkins to the Miami Heat for James Posey and Gary Payton. It'd've had been a public relations boon, too, since Payton's professional basketball career could've ended where it started—with the Seattle Supersonics.

Hell, I also wanted Sund to sign Shawn Kemp in lieu of Andre Brown -- which would've been another hyped transaction filled with a ton of hoopla -- but that never came to fruition.

Now, though, those ships have sailed off into oblivion; instead, it's time for the Supersonics to voyage onward with Kevin Durant captaining the proverbial boat.

Anyway, for no particular reason, here's a hilarious movie quote from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest: "They was giving me ten thousand watts a day, y'know, and I'm hot to trot! The next woman takes me on is gonna light up like a pinball machine and pay off in silver dollars!"

Unfortunately for us, that potentially awesome situation will never happen for us. Hate to say it, but bennett is never going to let such an effective attractor of seattle sports spirit anywhere near our locker room. That would help the city out too much in helping to work out an arena deal.

Too bad, I can only imagine payton mentoring durant on how to play defense at the 2 for a couple years. Kind of like dikembe and yao. Sigh.

Joe and Brian make good points.I'd have to agree that, a) Bennett wouldn't ever allow a GP signing, and b) even if he did, it wouldn't necessarily be a good signing, as it probably wouldn't help the locker room chemistry.

What would be awesome, is if GP officially retired, then came to Seattle to do some campaigning for the Sonics to stay in Seattle. (not sure why he would do this, but we can dream, can't we?)